To send a message to a recipient, the message must be addressed to the recipient using the protocol of a particular communication or messaging system. For example, a user might have to decide whether to send a particular message over email, or by instant messaging services over Internet-connected computers, or by text entry on a telephone using short message service (SMS), or by a similar telephone-enabled messaging service known as multimedia messaging service (MMS), or by other messaging systems. Each system, not surprisingly, has advantages and drawbacks, and not all intended recipients access every system that a sender might use.
Thus, when deciding how to get a message to a recipient, a sender must think about and balance a variety of considerations, including cost, recipient capabilities, recipient presence and preferences, and so on. Then, the sender must start up or invoke the selected messaging system and use it, a task made more difficult as technological messaging innovations and capabilities outpace ease-of-use innovations. Having made these critical observations, the invention described below is provided.